Fig. 4

PKD2 mitigated LPS-induced lung injury by activating autophagy. Mice were intratracheally injected with adenovirus expressing PKD2 or GFP (5 × 10¹² vg/ml) in 30 µl of PBS for three days. Then, the mice were intratracheally injected with LPS (1 mg/kg) for 24 h or intraperitoneally injected with the autophagy inhibitor 3-MA (15 mg/kg) for 30 min, followed by LPS (1 mg/kg) treatment for 24 h. (A-C) The TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 mRNA levels in the lung tissues were measured by qRT‒PCR. (D-F) The expression of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 in the lung tissues was detected by ELISA. (G-J) The levels of SQSTM1/P62 and Beclin-1 and the LC3-II/I ratio were detected by western blot analysis. (K) Representative immunofluorescence images of SQSTM1/P62 (red) and DAPI (blue) double staining in the lung tissue are shown. Scale bar = 100 μm. The experiments were repeated three times (three independent experiments). The data shown in the graphs are the mean ± SEM. *P < 0.05